Azimut Holding Spa Ord

Good afternoon, this is the Chorus Call Conference Operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Azimut Group Full Year 2025 Results Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and after the presentation there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star N0 on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Giorgio Meda, CEO of Azimut. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the Azimut full year 2025 result presentation. I'm Giorgio Meda, CEO of the group, and I'm pleased to be here with Alessandro Zambotti, CEO and Group C4, and Alex Opera, Head of Investor Relations. So this past year has been a truly defining one for us and likewise a very exciting one. As you know it was a year marked by change in leadership, yet our growth not only continues but actually accelerates. The defining steps in our growth journey reflect both the strength of our business model and the dedication of our people across all our markets. So, let's drive right into the presentation and move to slide three, please. So, the year 2025 continues to be one where we executed a deliberate result and we closed it by achieving a record €32 billion in net inflows and a net profit of €126 million, both above the strict expectation. Most notably, our recurring profit grew by an increase of 20% that is a best-in-class result. During the year, we also anticipated some key guidelines for our Elevate 2030 strategic plan. This plan will drive the next stage of growth for Agilent, defining an even more ambitious trajectory that will showcase the full potential of our diversified global platform and reinforce our position as a leading global independent player. Beyond these exceptional operating numbers, we are thrilled to discuss our concrete commitment to creating shareholder value, including a proposed raised dividend of €2 per share and a strategic capital allocation framework that aims to return roughly 25% of our current market cap over the next 18 months through dividends and share buybacks. Finally, while the process has taken longer than we originally envisaged, we continue to make progress on the CLB transaction. And let me tell you that this represents a transformational step for the group that will unlock significant value and Tore and Alessandro will discuss it more in detail later during the presentation. We are moving ahead, carrying the strong momentum into our 2026 targets and the execution of our Elevate 2030 strategic plan. And with that, let us please move to page four, where we can look at the key financial and operating highlights for the full year. First of all, total assets reached an impressive 145 billion euros at the end of January 26. marketing an excess of 30% increase per year in terms of assets, a new absolute record for the group. This was fueled by spectacular 32 billion euros in heavy inflows during 2025, which represents the strongest annual performance in our company's history. More importantly, 66% of these flows came from our global operations. This really demonstrates how the continued expansions of our international platform is successfully driving growth beyond our core markets in Italy, which remains strong and continues to be the foundation of our success. Furthermore, looking at our current trading for 2026, we are off to a very strong start and continue to see excellent momentum across the board. On the financial side, at a very high level, revenues reach €1.4 billion, supported by a 49% increase in recurring revenues. And that confirms the high quality and resilience of our business mix, while operating profits stood at 649 million euros, with our recurring EBIT also up 9% year over year. Group net profit reached 526 million euros, and the recurring net profit grew by a very strong 20% compared to last year. This reflects the steady expansion and scalability of our core business. Finally, let me highlight that net profit from our global operations reached 101 million euros, which now represents 19% of our total net profit. This consistent growth across our regions confirms the effectiveness of our international strategy, and these figures, let me tell you, put us in a highly robust position to continue executing our long-term growth agenda and creating tangible value for our shareholders. Now, turning to slide five, we want to put our exceptional performance into a clear perspective. And these numbers, I think, speak volumes. Our net profit growth of 20% is not just strong, it completely dominates the sector when compared to our Italian peers. And the difference is quite striking. While our competitors reported profit growth ranging from negative 1% to a maximum of 11%, has not delivered a robust 20% increase. This significant outperformance directly reflects the resilience and high scalability of our diversified global admittance model and a factor that, in our view, is not fully appreciated by the market. Moving to slide six, we look at, as we normally do, at the bridge between our 2024 and 2025 net profit. As I mentioned earlier, Group Net Profit reached €526 million compared to €568 million last year. However, as this chart clearly illustrates, the difference mainly reflects lower performance fees and capital gains below the operating profit line, while retirement profitability continued to grow strongly. Finally, under other items below EBIT, we see a negative variance of €57 million, And it's important to note that the 2024 baseline was significantly elevated by the capital gain from the sale of our stake in Kennedy Lewis. While in 2025, this block included some non-recurring write-offs on two investments, reflecting conservative valuation assumptions, which were partially offset by the growth on OVA, lower taxes, including a one-off tax refund, and gains on our own investments. Because of this moving path below the operating line, the truest measure of our success is highlighted in the lighter blue columns and the already mentioned 20% recurring net profit growth to a phenomenal 479 million euros. Now, let us turn to slide 7 and 8 where we look at the economics behind our different business lines and regions. Because the underlying drivers of our business remain highly consistent with what we presented during our nine-month update, I will keep this section very brief. On slide seven, looking at our business line, you can see that integrated solutions continues to act as a powerhouse for the group. These core vertical commands superior stable recurring margins of 70 basis points. At the same time, Global Vault and our institutions and also divisions are experiencing strong commercial momentum and that will become incredibly robust contributors to our net profit, making up about 20% of the overall net profit. And let me tell you that our strategic affiliates remain in a very active phase of growth and consolidation with investments ramping up as planned to expand their platforms. Moving to slide 8 and zooming in by region, the results really confirm the strength of the diversification of our global strategy with Italy that continues to show exceptionally robust earnings maintaining obviously a stable operating development even when factoring in lower performance fees and some CMB related costs. And obviously globally we are, you know, our underlying profitability is accelerating thanks to asset growth and strong operating leverage with very strong and impressive momentum in the Americas driven by the US and Brazil. And when you look at the contribution of the global business, I mean, this is summing up to a very healthy recurring net profit margin of 41 basis points. Now, moving to the next few slides, we are incredibly excited to share a new level of detail and transparency with all of you today. For the first time, we are providing a deeper look under the hoods of our key business verticals. to truly showcase the underlying power of our platform. Let us start with line 9 and look at integrated solutions, which represents the DNA of the firm and remains a massive growth engine for the group. This core vehicle is built on a powerful, vertically integrated business model that combines our proprietary product factories with our exceptional network of top-tier financial advisors. This is what made Azimut succeed in Italy out of a very pioneering business model. Today, we have been able to say that we successfully exported the same model to key high-growth markets such as Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, and Taiwan. Here we are disclosing the average assets per advisors across our key countries. And as you can clearly see, our network is highly productive. In Italy, excluding the T&D perimeter, average assets per advisors stand at a very strong 29 million euros. However, when you look at the global figures, I mean, these are even more striking. In Brazil, average assets per advisor reach 32 million euros. And in Turkey, pretty impressive results of 66 million euros per advisor. This proves that our model of combining proprietary product factories with top-tier financial advisors is highly scalable and remarkably effective across different global jurisdictions. Turning to slide 10, I want to spotlight our global world solutions division and the productivity that we are seeing across our key international hubs. To give a brief overview of this business, Global Wealth Solutions connects our extensive network to deliver exceptional investment ideas and products worldwide, where we offer a true multi-asset proposition across both public and private markets, all supported by a unified custody setup with the world's leading banks. Our solutions range both from personalized advisory and discussion and portfolio management services to highly customizable actively managed certificates and bespoke structured products as we aim to carry to high-net-worth and ultra-net-worth individuals, families, and institutions around the world. In Monaco, for example, we combine a bespoke private bank's heritage with sophisticated asset management solutions In Switzerland, we leverage a unique global model to serve our clients. And our U.S.-based azimuth investment advisors provide neutral client-focused advisory portfolio consolidation for both domestic and Latin American investors. And in Dubai, Singapore, and Hong Kong, we act as a premier global partner for individuals and institutions. A major competitive advantage for our inetro clients is our capability to facilitate offshore investing as we leverage our Luxembourg idea factory as a central hub for product generation as we provide a unified financial services offering with multi-booking capabilities across different jurisdictions. Our regional figures are truly exceptional. In the United States our relationship managers oversee an average of $260 million individually. Monaco and Switzerland are also highly productive managing $140 and $138 million per advisor respectively and also we are seeing fantastic scale in the UAE, Singapore and Hong Kong that are coming up and showing very high growth rate. of business relationship managers globally has increased by a solid 8% year-over-year, reaching an impressive $104 million, and we grew our team with 12 new additions throughout the year. That obviously proves that as we expand our footprint and grow our team of relationship managers, then just not adding headcount, but also productivity. When you look at slide 11, you see how our total assets for this for this distribution line reached $9.4 billion by the end of 2025, and $1.3 billion was essentially addition during the year, the result of organic business development that is a very robust 18% growth rate. We see this accelerating as we have started the year in a great fashion. We continue to attract new assets and scale our overall book of business, cross-selling our high-quality proprietary solutions to these existing portfolios, and we are incredibly excited for what lies ahead for us in the future. And finally, on slide 12, we detail our institutional and wholesale division. This segment has grown into a globally diversified platform with now more than €41 billion in total assets. And, you know, the mix is exceptionally well-balanced with 42% institutional clients and 58% wholesale. We want also to provide here more details about the institutional business by region to give more color about our activities that go beyond our domestic market and certainly to note here is the weight and the significance of our U.S. business from a regional standpoint and that is the result of the consolidation of the recently acquired North Square investment. And then turning to slide 13, we want to highlight a selection of our most significant client wins. I'm not going to go through every single win, although each one is certainly a big testament to our ability to perform and to have now the credentials to grow beyond our whole market. But you can see here that certainly we display the power of a very well-diversified product factory across both public and private Now, turning to slide 14, I think, you know, this is the best slide to perfectly translate everything that we just discussed in terms of our global platform into tangible bottom line numbers. Historically, some market observers have been very skeptical about the true profitability and value of our international expansion, certainly over the last decade where we have been very focused and committed to grow the business, but finally we can see that these are very exceptional data that prove, in my view, in a very sort of undisputable way, that those skeptics were very, very wrong. Over the years, we have strategically deployed approximately €660 million in net M&A investments to build our international footprint. Today, this platform accounts for more than €73 billion of total assets and generates more than €100 million of net profit. That itself translates on a 15% return on investment that, you know, compared to any cost of capital you can estimate for the business, we believe our cost of capital is 10%, proves a very meaningful, sizable value creation that we see expanding in the short and long term. And as I said, it really demonstrates what has been the effectiveness of our capital allocation strategy. Slide 15 is just a very quick but powerful reminder of our ambitions through the Elevate 2030 targets. They were already published in November. Just to make one point very clear, our growth story is far from over and our fundraising efforts of 5 to 8 billion euros a year will lead to effectively double our average total assets and translate into a remarkable under the 80 to 280 million euros net profit generated strictly from our global operation by the end of this decade. In the following slide, we just summarized what are the different private initiatives driving growth in the short term across public markets, our Luxembourg mutual fund range. our financial planning franchise with our life insurance solutions. Certainly here we have been moving very, very aggressively when it comes to the launch of brand new products such as RTVTFs in the US market, currently of the distribution ratio of NSI, and the strong push that we are making for our global wealth solution business around the world. And then let me touch very briefly upon something that has been a very important topic of interest in the market over the last few weeks, the state of private credit and private markets in general, aside from the news that we see particularly overseas. I want to just give a brief update on our when it comes to private markets. First of all, we are in the market now with a significant number of funds that are currently raising a commitment. Overall, we have a target over the next 12 to 13 months for 2.1 billion euros of commitment to be raised for a very wide range of projects. As I mentioned, we already covered almost 30% of these targets, but what is important to appreciate from slide 17 is the diversified offering that we have, certainly diversified in terms of investment verticals, and likewise in terms of geographies. with Europe, US, Latin America and Turkey showcasing a very strong product development activity in this respect. In page 18, we show where is, for our Italian business, the exposure of our retail clients to illiquid strategies. Here, what is remarkable is essentially, there are two things that actually are probably noteworthy. The first one is that we started talking to our clients and explaining the merits of diversification across liquid assets well before many of our competitors did. Actually, this is an exercise that started Six years ago in 2019, today we have achieved an exposure of almost 9%. That is remarkable in absolute, certainly is the proof of the very hard work that we put and the trust of our clients into this investment diversification effort, but also proves how we are ahead looking at our global competition. We are using here data coming from a McKinsey report But what is striking is that we have an average exposure that is four times larger than what you have globally. And even when you look at the long-term targets, there is a target forecasted and projected by McKinsey of 10% exposure of retail to private market investments. But we keep our long-term targets of actually achieving 15% to 20%. And this can only be done with, as I mentioned, diversification. We have read a lot of things over the last couple of weeks, as I mentioned. What we want to show in slide 19 is the approach that we have, particularly when it comes to our Italian franchise, and here is just a deep dive into a subset of our Italian private market strategies that amounted to approximately 5.5 billion euros overall. Here we are focusing on 3.1 and we are only focusing on private equity and direct lending strategies. And what we want to show here is a very high level of diversification both in terms of assets and sectors, essentially reducing any geosucratic risk that comes from very large exposure to a single sector or to a very concentrated portfolio of investments. In slide 20, I think that is the most important of all these slides highlighting our success across public markets is the results, the performance that we have generated. There are a lot of figures in these slides, but let me focus on a few metrics. First of all, you see here what we have raised across the different verticals. Obviously, we are looking at different metrics. asset classes in a way, and let's look at some performance metrics, such as total value to PD investments, so that is a measure of the performance as these are counted in our NAVs. Let me tell you that the NAV calculation rules are pre-taxed in Europe, and we are not really or to take any sort of mark to market beyond what is really proven by the actual accounting of the businesses and what has been achieved. So these are very reflective measures of performance embedded into the funds and obviously when we come to these portfolios and we come to, you know, realization of the value out of exits, we would be able to distribute reasonably higher performance to our investors. But let's see what is the average vintage of all the strategies and certainly compare also to our you know, to the benchmark, these are very remarkable, they say, proof of our ability to generate even over a short period of time value out of illiquid portfolios. And then last but not least, I mean, certainly meaningful when you look at the news that I mentioned, just now, what is the ratio of distributions to our investors that in certain instances for private equity, private debt and a number of club deals has achieved almost between 15 and 20% of capital being returned to our investors. That is certainly considered a very young vintage, a very important element appreciated by clients who have started familiarizing with these illiquid investments only recently. I will now turn to Alessandro for a detailed review of our financials for 2025.

Thank you, Giorgio, and good afternoon to everyone. So moving to slide 21, let us take a step back and look at the fantastic track record that we have built over the past seven years. Since 2019, we have expanded our footprint and compounded our growth, driving our total asset to continuous new all-time high and growing at a remarkable 16% CAGR to about 145 billion as of today. Over this same period, we captured 94 billion euros in cumulative net inflows, with a highly strategic 10 billion euros flowing directly into private markets. Our success goes hand in hand with the success of our clients as we generated a net performance for clients of about 28% of the cost. And for our shareholders, the numbers are also speaking for themselves. The group generated €3 billion in net profit, distributing €1.3 billion to shareholders, including the 20-year proposed dividend of €2. It can fully repay close to €1 billion in debt and transform into cash positions of over €800 million. So these are important numbers and are a direct reflection of our discipline execution and the structural resilience of the entire FASDEMUD group. So then turning to slide 22, we want to highlight the exceptional quality of the revenues that are driving these record results. Historically, some marketers have questioned our reliance on performance fees. And as this slide definitely demonstrates, we have completely transformed our earnings profile. Chakria's strategic choice has led us to have a P&L driven mainly by highly stable recurring revenue, and today only a small fraction of our revenue base remains exposed to variability. With about 95% of our total revenue now coming from these stable income streams, And we have built a robust engine that delivers highly predictable value year after year. So now moving to slide 23, we once again review our ability to generate value and recurring net profit, confirming for 2025 the solidity of the recurring net profit margin. But above all, as you can clearly see from the chart, 2025 marks a new all-time high in the history of our firm. We deliver an outstanding €479 million in recurring profit, constantly growing year after year. And to put this into perspective, this figure is more than two and a half times larger than in 2019. Let's now also go into the details, as we always do, in particular on slide 24, where we have the revenue breakdown. The revenue grew by a solid 71 million euro, thanks to the continuous growth of the recurring revenues, which offset the lower contribution from variable fees from both the open-ended and the issuance funds. Looking more closely to the components, so at the level of the recurring fees increased by €52 million over here. This was supported by the continuous expansion of global business. €42 million is coming from our international business and mainly driven by the contributions from the US, the UAE, Brazil, Singapore and Monaco. In Italy, we deliver broad-based growth across all business lines, funding mutual funds, alternative investment, pension funds, and also our NOVA partnership is becoming more significant. Regarding also performance fees, we recorded a year-over-year decrease of €17 million. However, it is important to highlight the €24 million positive global momentum driven by Brazil, Turkey, Monaco, and Switzerland. In Italy, we sustained a strong alpha in our domestic discretionary portfolio management, which helped us to offset a negative fulcrum effect. Finally, looking at the insurance revenue, while the total was down 11 million euros compared to last year, the underlying quality of this revenue still improved. We achieved a 5% increase, representing 5 million euros in recurring insurance revenue, due to the solid growth and the optimization of our product mix. The overall decrease was entirely driven by a €60 million drop in the issuance performances, reflecting a first-half performance compared to the exceptionality coming from the strong figures we saw in 2024. No less important, when looking to the first few months of 2026, we are off to a solid start. At the level of the other revenues, increased by $70 million compared to last year, mainly driven by structuring fees related to our growing Brazilian private infrastructure business that we already commented for the previous quarter. So, again, we are back to, let's say, to a normal evolution of this line. On the next slide, we analyzed the cost. where we note an increase of €55 million in total. Here we try to give you some more details as well. At the level of the distribution cost, we have an increase of €29 million compared to last year. This is partially explained by the direct correlation with recurring revenue growth in Italy and abroad, particularly in the apps of Singapore and Monaco. And it also reflects the higher provision for valuable incentive to Italian FA alongside the strategic marketing and TAV-related costs that we already mentioned during the year 2025. Moving to personal Chandler's G&A, we recorded a €25 million increase. This is primarily a preliminary aspect driven by our successful G&A activities, and in particular I'm referring to Kennedy Capital and IPOS, while domestically we maintain cost discipline. A few words on the four-quarter increase. This is strictly tied to performance-linked compensation that aligns with the strong alpha that our team and portfolio managers deliver. DNA and provision, I would define it as broadly flat. And in general, it is always important to emphasize that acquisition costs are mainly driven by the Italian business. You see about 90% contribution, while the administrative costs are split 60-40 between Italy and the international business. We close with the next slide, which instead tries to detail the results below our EBIT. First, thanks to the geographical diversification of the group, recurring EBIT grew by 9% to 578 million. Moving below the operating line, finance income amounted to €41 million for the year. This was primarily driven by a positive €37 million contribution from our own investment and related portfolio performance, along with €8 million in net interest earned and another €8 million in dividends from our GP stakes and strategic experience. It is worth noting that this line item was impacting during the quarter by €25 million, not recalling a write-off on specific investments. We are talking about VC, proprietary investment, and achieving, I would say, looking also to the fantastic results, an extremely conservative approach. We define it as a better and conservative approach to make more confident on the future numbers of the group. And regarding our tax position, we're recording an adjusted tax rate of 21.5% for 2025 and excluding a 27 million euro of one-off tax refund related to the InfraGroup foreign dividends. Looking ahead, we are guiding for a normalized tax rate of approximately 25% for the full year 26. And then ultimately this brings us to the bottom line and the recurring net profit of $479 million as already mentioned with an impressive 20% compared to last year. Moving to the slide 27, here we have, as usual, our net financial position. Today the group has no debt and the net financial position is around €813 million, with an increase compared to the previous year. The increase of 63 million compared to last year is mainly due to the contribution, obviously, of the net profit before tax. So I'm referring to the 673 million euro. Then we have the positive contribution coming from our proceeds from our disinvestment in Australia and the exit of Roundsheet that is contributing 121 million euro. And then let's say we have an observation of cash coming from the M&A for 60 million, advanced taxes for 275 million, dividend for 323 million, and buyback of 62 million euro. So this should reconcile the variation compared to previous year. Moving to slide 28, we highlighted our continuing commitment to delivering substantial, tangible returns to our shareholders. Based on our record recurring profitability and our highly resilient cash generation, the Board of Directors is proud to propose a dividend of €2 per share. with an increase of 15% compared to the previous year, and dividend yield of approximately 6%. This proposed dividend perfectly aligns with our stated capital return strategy that we will elaborate into more detail shortly. Moving to slide 29, we want to detail our capital return strategy, which reflects our concrete commitment to create the value for our shareholders. So, as you can see from the headline, we are targeting an optimal capital structure to allow us to distribute approximately €1.3 billion in cash over the next 18 months. To put this into perspective, this represents roughly 25% of Atom's current capitalization. Looking at the bridge chart, this plan is fully supported by our strong financial position. We start with 379 million euros in distributable cash and 434 million euros in committed equity at the end of 2025. A significant portion of this commitment is tied to our expansion in the United States. most notably our acquisition of NSI. And as you may recall, this strategic transaction involves a minimum purchase price of $110 million, which will be paid through a combination of cash and atmosphere. Furthermore, this committed equity covers our recent transaction in Brazil and includes provisions for future potential turnout, commitment, and options to increase our shares in transactions done across our global platform. We have marked approximately 30% to cover our operating cash and net working capital needs. And then there is another 15% specifically reserved to meet our global regulatory capital requirements. Finally, the remaining 10% is deployed into our proprietary investment as are referring to open-ended fund are included in the net financial position and directly support our product generation and co-investment strategies and provide potential for outside return, such as the one we achieved with Kennedy used in 2024. Looking ahead over the year 26 and 27, we expect to generate approximately 650 million euros in free cash flow available for distribution, and along with roughly 250 million euros in proceeds from our strategic disinvestment, most notably the upfront cash from TMB transactions. This basically gives us about 1.3 billion, as I mentioned in the beginning, to return to our shareholders. We plan to execute this return through two main channels. First, a share-by-back program of up to 500 million euros, which includes the full cancellation of the reputed shares. Second, the distribution of between 750 and 800 million euros in dividends during 2026 and 2027. To conclude on this slide, we want to reiterate that our capital return strategy is the ultimate testament to our ongoing value creation. And with the comprehensive plan we have laid out today, we are decisively addressing and resolving any doubts regarding our use of cash and our capital allocation policies. So, moving to slide 13. For a quick update on TMB project, the project is ongoing and the TMB division, with the support of the OPSA FSI, the fund is proceeding with the good growth results. Robust numbers for total asset growth, which at the end of January already exceed 29 billion. But also at the level of the revenues and the net profit, they are continuing to expand, although the net profit is penalized by directly affiliated marketing and project costs. That is as well mentioned at the beginning when we comment our evolution of the administrative costs. Regarding the transaction timeline, as you know, we are extending the agreement with SSI, substantially until the end of the year, and we continue to work together on the IT separation and all the operational setup necessary to complete our migration and to conclude our important project. Finally, I want to provide a brief update regarding the Bank of Italy Remediation Plan of Azimut Capital Management. At the end of February, we successfully concluded the remediation activities. This has been completed also maintaining a constant alignment with the regulator. We are now entering the final phase, which involves the internal audit verification of all the implementation related to the remediation plan. This internal verification, we expect to conclude it at the end of March. So then concluding this phase, we expect then the regulator will formally validate the outcome. This keeps us fully on track on the officially complete action plan by our target that was defined with the regulator at the end of April 26, but as well as I mentioned, we are achieving it one month before. This, we know, that is one of the prerequisite steps to receiving the necessary regulatory approvals from the regulators for the overall TMB transaction. So we are confident that we will have concluded this project before the end of the year. With this, I hand over to George, and thank you.

Thank you, Alessandro. So turning to the last slide, slide 31, I'd like to conclude today's presentation by looking at our guidance for 2026. We are building on a fantastic commercial momentum that we have generated across our global platform, and we can only confirm our targets for the year. The demand view are as follows. Under normal market conditions, we are targeting €10 billion in total energy inflows. and a core net profit of €550 million excluding extraordinary items. I mentioned at the beginning of the call we are already off to a very strong start and as you can see on this slide based on the preliminary February figures in just the first two months of the year we have already achieved over €3 billion in net inflows and at the beginning of next week we will provide a more detailed review of how we got there. This early momentum gives us a very solid foundation and confidence in our ability to deliver another year of robust and profitable growth. So to sum it up, our platform is accelerating, also in 2026. Our growth path is clearly defined and we remain entirely focused on executing our strategy, creating outstanding value. for you, our shareholders. So thank you all for your time today and, you know, we remain very excited about the future of Azimut and we will now open the floor to your questions. Thank you.

Thank you. This is the Coruscall conference operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and 1 on their touchtone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star N2. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star N1 at this time. First question is from Gianluca Ferrari, Mediobanca.

Yes, hi, good afternoon. Thanks for the presentation. Three for me. I would start with T&B. I understood that the first part of the process is almost being completed. I was wondering more on the second part of the process. Will be you guys in charge of it or FSI will step in and will, let's say, discuss with the regulators about the final approval of the project? The second is, and the third actually, are both on page 29 on the new capital management policy, a couple of clarifications. The first one is the 250 million proceeds divestments. Is this related to the first part of the upfront of TNB that, if I recall correctly, was 240 million? Are you referring to the distribution of that part of the cash you should receive? And secondly, going forward after 2027, how should we think about this new capital management policy? Are you going to provide us with a dividend payout on the cash flows you generate plus will you still go for a sizable big buyback program with cancellation or you will shift to annual BADEC programs and if you elaborate a bit on what will be over time the approach thank you

So I'm going to take the first two and then Giorgio will elaborate on the third one. So in relation to TMB and the other way around, we are running, let's say, both sides in the discussion with the regulator because, as you say, at the level of capital management, we are running at the remediation and as I mentioned we finalized the remediation at the end of February and this is our main focus as Azimut obviously. On the other way around the fund, so CFSI is dealing with the other division I would say of Banco Italy responsible of the authorization or at least the preliminary authorization before it goes to the European Central Bank. So we are splitting the activity in two parts, and obviously the fund is the main reference for Bank of Italy to finalize the regulatory process of the authorization on their side. For the 250, it's like an amount linked to the 247 million euro of proceeds. So I'm absolutely referring to TMB. It's just with the rounding to make the numbers easy to read.

Gianluca, let me pick up your question. Obviously, we are providing here visibility until the end of 2027, that is more than 18 months from now. And, you know, let me tell you that, you know, you can certainly tell how something will go by how it begins. So, you know, obviously we set the tone for the next 15 months and the future we will certainly stick to the principle of optimal capital structure. The reason why we are not saying anything more than what we are saying today, although it's pretty substantial, is that we still have the TMB transaction that is pending and we would like to have any short remuneration policy or capital allocation strategy to be elaborated within a very clear set of financial objectives for the group for the next four to five years. You know, we have really, you know, I think, you know, covered a long distance over the last six months, pending, you know, the uncertainties related to T&D. But today, you see our, you know, capital allocation strategy, the way it's defined as a very strong commitment to create value through, as we called it, you know, an optimal capital structure.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Next question is from Alberto Villa in .

Hi, good afternoon and thanks for taking my questions. I have three. One is back on slide 14 where you show more details about the international business and you give more details and that's obviously very helpful. Can you maybe give us also an indication of revenues and operating costs related to this business in 2025 to have some more details there? And the second question is on the private markets. Thanks here again for giving us more visibility. At the same time, maybe you can elaborate a little bit on the amount of funds that will start to mature in the next, let's say, two, three years and how it works if there are sort of great periods or anything that can eventually accommodate any situation in which the fund need more time or anything that could give more, let's say, details on that would be helpful. And finally, on one line item in the P&L, the financial income going forward, how should we look at it? Because maybe that's fueled by the investment of the liquidity you have in your balance sheet. So given that you are going to distribute, that's nice. Is that fair to assume that financial income will be probably less supportive on the P&L side in the future? Thank you.

Okay, Alberto, I'll pick the first two questions. Regarding the breakdown of our BCPNL by region or business line, I would encourage you to look at our slide seven and eight. I think we tried to summarize what are the key underlying drivers of our business at all levels, revenues, cost and certainly margins. Also, with this presentation, we are providing a look through in terms of KPIs such as advisors or assets under management by single distribution lines. I wouldn't probably bore you now with all the details and certainly we are available for a follow-up call to discuss more what has been driving the business country by country or business line by business line. The business has been growing, average assets per advisor increasing, you know, scale effect across businesses and now have become pretty sizable and we are able to extract operating leverage benefits and you see that in terms of margins on assets or, you know, margins on revenues. As far as the private market business is concerned, let me tell you something. Funny enough, we were the very first to start promoting private market investments with individual or private clients, but we have really been very cautious when it comes to offering evergreen funds to the same client. I think the market has been inundated by what I call effectively an evergreen washing in the offering of these products. People really try to entice clients with providing them the dream of liquidity when actually there's no liquidity in the underlying portfolios. If that liquidity is sort of possible, maybe it comes at the expense of lower returns because of the funds they need to retain a meaningful cash buffer to honor the call for redemptions. We have really started probably with the most complicated part with our clients, explaining them the merits of diversifying across the liquid strategy. possibility to enjoy what is the so-called illiquidity premium, you know, patient capitals, and within a diversified portfolio, certainly seeing how to create, let's say, a segmentation or a diversification of the portfolio using different time horizons. On that basis, we have not relied on evergreen funds, and, you know, I can tell you considering what is our average vintage, that we would expect the first liquidations of the funds that we have launched over the last few years to start in 28, 29. And our clients, they are waiting for 28, 29 to get their money back and portfolios have been built with that specific purpose. We are not planning and we do not see any need whatsoever to reinvents or to gate or to sort of promote continuation funds because, you know, things have been done the proper way.

Well, referring to your point on finance income, I mean, it's obviously, let's say, to take the point considering, first of all, let's say, the different contributors on this finance income line. As I mentioned during the details of the evolution referring to this year, we were talking about portfolio performance, we were talking about net interest earned, dividend from GP stakes. So there is a mix of things that they are contributing below EBITs. Obviously compared to last year where there was the benefit and the positive gain on Kennedy-Lewis, we cannot compare the two here in a fair like for like way. But at the same time, over the last three years, I would say that the finance income line is contributing on our net profit. Therefore, I would expect also for the next year to be at least in line with our 40 million, but probably even more due to the fact that also there we have the contribution of our partnerships. Our equity participation, you know, they are generating dividends. So, again, mix of things that, you know, make us confident to maintain a nice level of contribution from this line.

Thank you very much. If I can, a follow-up question on the net inflows target. You started very well the year. Of course, as you did in the past, maybe you will adjust the estimate later on during the year. Is there any particular flavor you can give us in terms of what is happening in terms of contribution? any area of particularly strong indications coming from the net inflows of the early months of the year?

No, we can tell you that it's a very balanced contribution from all the business lines, all the geographies. When you look at 2025, the global business was accounting for 66% of total net inflows, certainly, and the US took the lion's share. This year we started 50-50 kind of balanced and I think we are firing on all cylinders consistently across all the business lines and geographies. I think this is the beauty of the platform today. We see particularly when it comes to emerging markets what I call a synchronized growth. something that has not been always the case in the previous years where, you know, it can happen in the mixed bag. You know, you have geographies doing very well, others slowing down. Right now we see really strong momentum across the board. Thank you.

Next question is from Hubert Lam, Bank of America.

Hi, good afternoon. I've got a few questions. Firstly, on your excess capital, which you're focused on in terms of, you know, paying dividends and buyback, does this mean that in the near term or the next 18 months, you don't plan on doing any M&A? That's the first question. Second question is on private markets. Do you expect any slowdown in fundraising for the private markets, just given the noise in the sector, specifically on slide 17? So will the rest of the fundraising target take longer than the first 800 million that you raised? The next question is also on private markets. I just wanted to double-check what you said about redemptions. Do the funds actually have redemption features or not? And if they do have redemption features, can you remind us what the redemption profile is? And if I could squeeze in one more on your investment write-down that you had in Q4. Sorry, maybe I missed it, but can you remind us or just elaborate what's it related to? and any relation to any core investments you may have with clients or not on the write-down. Thank you.

I will take your question on private markets. First of all, we are not accelerating the slowdown. You know, as I mentioned, we have a number of strategies that are actively fundraising right now, 2.1 billion euros overall. We are, you know, kind of almost a third, more than a third of that target. We don't see any slowdown. I have to tell you that although we have been expanding globally, this franchise yearly still remains the most important market and most of the things that we read today in the press, they are very much geographically isolated, apart from our investors reading what's happening in the U.S., but this is the U.S., not Italy. They are not concerned, certainly we have our advisors, that is the value of the Azure business model. We see that with clients and explain the differences and provide all the comfort they need with constant updates on the portfolio and providing all the reasons why if more investments are, let's say, possible, then these are effectively and efficiently placed into other private market strategies. In terms of liquidations or let's say realization of investments and distribution to clients, as I said, we are expecting now, particularly for our private credit strategies, the first liquidation starting in 28 to 29. By nature, these are closed-ended funds when it comes to private credit. Think about direct lending, these are loans that have a term that is consistent with the fund life or the fund terms. We do not have any cockroaches, we have been always implementing very tight and disciplined investment policies and it's not always working for every single investment the way we want, but overall we are delivering. You see that from the performance of the different verticals. in average, a better performance than we have sort of discussed with clients when they have come to the portfolio. So in general, as I said, unaffected by what's happening away from Italy, clients are very well-catered in terms of being informed and explained what's happening and we are growing. That means that at the end of the day, people, they understood the differences and they put more trust in us.

Looking to the capital structure, so probably going back to slide 30, you can probably see that we put an amount of money that we commit for the 26 and 27 of 300 million euro. It doesn't mean that we are going to do chemine with this amount. Obviously, it's a group that is growing. Therefore, we have to look back also, again, to regulatory requirements. go back to the operational cash needs because, again, we are present in 80 companies. Therefore, we need to maintain the right level of the operating cash. As well, we are investing in general on the IT, on the AI, so we have a bulk of CapEx that we have to support to grow our business and to support internally, but also our financial advisor, our distribution network with the right instruments to proceed with the right way to meet and target the market. So linoleum is an amount that as well as different view and different elements to consider. This covers, let's say, the portion of cash that we would expect to keep for this. Moving to the point of the investments, as I was referring during the explanation, again, We decided, I mean, we evaluated the opportunity to be very conservative on two VC proprietary investments. Therefore, this approach helped us, you know, to look again to the forward looking of the numbers, more confident on the future results. So we take advantages from that.

And just one thing about investments, Alessandro said it all, but just also to link to what we said in the past. As opposed to the past, we are really putting at the same level growth and shorter remuneration. What we are targeting is an optimal capital structure as it is and it will always be a growth company. We will certainly consider should anything come to our attention, external financing for a transaction. What we are putting here is a clear statement in terms of giving the rights and the same importance to shareholders and to growth opportunities. But it's a pretty unique proposition that we want to promote in the market and hopefully the market will appreciate it.

Great, thank you.

Next question is from Elena Perini, Intesa San Paolo.

Yes, good afternoon and thank you for taking my questions. The first question is on slide 29, again on your capital distribution strategy. because I read from the press release and then the slide also confirms it that you are going to distribute 750 to 800 million in dividends over the next 18 months. So this I suppose also includes the dividend that you propose now. and it's going to be paid in May, just for a confirmation. And then you mentioned that the dividend starting from next year will be split into tranches, but I was wondering whether this would imply an interim dividend already in November this year, and then the balance in May next year, or on the contrary, you will have The first tranche referring to 26 earnings in May 27 and then the second tranche in November, just to clarify. Then going to slide number 30 on TMB transaction. Considering that June now is quite close and you are still waiting for the approval of the Bank of Italy on the effectiveness of the remediation measures that you have taken, I mean, is it more likely to see that the finalization of the spin-off in the second half just to have some favor about a potential timeline? And then finally, I have a question on your tax rate for next year as a You mentioned a recurrent taxation for this year at around 21.5%, but if I remember well, you mentioned in the past a higher level of taxation for the future, but just for confirmation. Thank you.

Elena, I will answer your question on the dividend. So 2026 dividend paid against the 2025 earnings will be fully paid at the end of May. And we will propose to the General Assembly shareholders to switch to a pre-installment dividend payment starting with 2027 against 2026 earnings. That is a transition to a new system that is in line with what now a very large number of financial services companies do, but has become now a standard. And I have to say that we see it strong merit to adopt the same policy as we have over the years noted a behavior of the share price around the dividend payment that has been disturbing us, creating unnecessary volatility. We want to offer very smooth and predictable cash flow generation for shareholders, hence the decision to move to a May and November payment against the previous year earnings.

Well, taking your point of TMB and the expectation, well, as you know, we built the renewal of the binding agreement and the exclusivity in a way that there will be no additional pressure in the market and as well to the regulator in a way that, you know, it's automatically the date of June can be postponed to the end of December without any, you know, additional pressure. and negotiation or whatever. So basically, our attention now is on the remediation, as I was saying before, the funds and FSI, so FSI is focus on the regulatory side and I would say both of us are concentrated to be in the right way the migration process of this transaction because as you probably remember when also we discussed together, it's something that we cannot, you know, do not consider because it's significant and it's important that, you know, tomorrow when the client will migrate and operate. correctly starting from day one. So this is our focus for the 2026, considering also obviously the objective to get there within the end of the year. At the level of the tax rate, if you recall slide 26, we have mentioned the benefits so the lower tax rate for this year but also we you know confirm our guidance at 25 percent for 2026. okay thank you gentlemen there are no more questions registered at this time

Well, great. Fantastic. Thank you, everyone. Hopefully we will catch up in person soon. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones.